Everyone is so excited about Apple’s new VR glasses. Meanwhile in my kitchen it smells burnt and my Homepod in response to “Hey Siri Status Timer”: “The timer has been cancelledl” WTF? You literally had only one job! 🤯

Buying an Ooni was such a good idea 🍕🥰

I saw maique posting it and it seems, Manton started it …

The idea is very nice and so I thought I would join in. 😎

I haven’t yet been to many different countries. That’s mainly because my wife and I decided two decades ago to avoid cars and planes for traveling. And with just a bike and / or by train, you don’t get very far unless you have a lot of time. Unfortunately, I don’t. (And of course money always plays a certain role, too.)

Anyway, here is the list of countries I have visited so far:

• Argentina 🇦🇷
• Austria 🇦🇹
• Czech Republic 🇨🇿
• Denmark 🇩🇰
• England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿
• France 🇫🇷
• Germany 🇩🇪
• Italy 🇮🇹
• Russia 🇷🇺
• Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
• Slovenia 🇸🇮
• Spain 🇪🇸
• Switzerland 🇨🇭
• Wales 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿
• USA 🇺🇸

Iron Curtain Trail Day Three 🚴‍♂️🚴💨💨

Iron Curtain Trail Day Two 💨💨🚴‍♂️🚴‍♀️🥴😄

Iron Curtain Trail Day One 🚴‍♂️🚴

Here the ride begins 🚴‍♂️🚴 …

Waiting in Hanover for the second train to arrive.

Currently reading: How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens 📚

2.5 days of cycling ahead of us 🥰

Brewery

I went to a brewery and had

Problems connecting Apple Wireless Keyboard (Aluminum) to MacBook

I have an old Apple Wireless Keyboard (model A1314) that has served me very well. Yesterday it suddenly stopped connecting to my MacBook Pro (M1). It was listed, but clicking on connect did nothing. I made macOS Ventura forget the device and tried to reconnect it, but to no avail. I shut down the keyboard and rebooted everything, still no luck. I held the power button on the keyboard (no cable to connect with) until it flashed, tried several new batteries, asked the internet and just could not find a solution.

It turned out that I had to press and hold the power button on my keyboard until it went into pairing mode, and I had to hold it down throughout the entire setup process, even while entering the pairing code (it did not even show up with my other approaches, only spinning indicators resulting in dead ends). I am 100% certain that I have never performed such an acrobatic dance to connect a keyboard to a computer before. But maybe I'm going senile.

What I did in week six, 2023

In continuation to week five, here are the things I was interested in week six, 2023:

• 🐍 A few weeks ago, I had the top case of my MacBook replaced because the battery was defective. I took the opportunity to completely reinstall the system. Most of it is now up and running, but Python 3 was still missing. Python is a programming language that even I understand to some extent, but the installation is an absolute mess. This time I first installed pyenv via Homebrew and then Python. Maybe then the handling of the different versions won't slip through my fingers quite so quickly.

• ✅ From time to time, I try to replace certain apps with Apple's own and see if they are now so good that I can do without third-party apps. A few weeks ago, I tried this with task management. I've been a Things user since day one, managing both my work and personal tasks. Later, it became too confusing and I wanted to separate work and private tasks. I then used OmniFocus for work and Things for my private life. Unfortunately, the Siri integration via the Apple Watch didn't work well, especially because Siri doesn't understand English terms, like "Things" on German-language systems. Therefore, Siri never understood to which app I want to add a task to. That's why I gave up on Things a few years ago and used Apple's Reminders app for my private tasks. Thanks to smart lists, tags etc. I thought that I could possibly also manage my professional tasks with Reminders. But two weeks later I realised that this is not yet an option for me. The filter options for the smart lists are too limited, because you can't, for example, include one list and exclude another. Since I don't like the beta of OmniFocus 4 at all so far, I shifted my professional tasks to Things. I like the app a lot and I think I'm happy with the solution again for now.
• 📺 Started watching Star Wars: The Bad Batch: Season 2 and Slow Horses (2022).
• 📺 Continued watching Bad Sisters (2022) - ★★★★☆
• 🍿 Watched Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022). It's not really a bad movie but I did not really like it that much - ★★★☆☆
• 🎙 Walking the dog and listened to podcasts:
  • AppStories: Mastodon Web, Mac, and Utility Apps
  • Connected: 436: Satya Nadella, He’s a Stone-Cold Killa
  • Hemispheric Views: 077: Canion Dot Blog Slash Save!
  • Launched: 45: Timery - Joe Hribar
  • Launched: 50: Runestone - Simon Støvring
  • Launched: 55: Hand Mirror - Rafa Conde
  • Mac Power Users: 677: Software Club: Fantastical
  • Really Specific Stories: Manton Reece
  • Upgrade: 445: Headwinds
• 👨‍💻 So, I've been doing a bit of catching up with Launched (@launched) by Charlie Chapman. I really do enjoy his podcast. Especially the episode with Rafa Conde was so much fun. The "advertisement" worked, instabought the pro version of Handmirror and if you use your MacBook with different monitor setups, be sure to check out HiDock as well (pssst, it's free!)
• 👨‍💻 If you use Chrome or Firefox check out StreetPass for Mastodon.
• 🖼 I was fascinated by the Midjourney pictures in my local Mastodon timeline.
• 🍺 I don't even know why, but at the beginning of the year I resolved not to eat any meat as cold cuts for a month. In addition, I wanted to completely abstain from alcohol for a month. Both worked out well. I'm sticking to meatless dinners and I've also stopped drinking a delicious pale ale or something else during the week. I think that can't hurt in the end. Since this has worked so well, I have come up with two new things for February: no sweets, chocolate, cakes or similar foods with a lot of added sugar. And additionally, no coffee. I had real withdrawal symptoms for the first two or three days (headache, fatigue, slight aching limbs). It's so hard for me to do without a delicious coffee in the morning. But well, there are only a good two weeks left. I don't know yet what nonsense I'll come up with for next month. 🤦‍♂️

What I was interested in during the fifth week of 2023 (teaser: Chagall, LEGO, macOS, iOS, podcasts, tv)

In continuation to week four, here are the things I was interested in week five.

• 📺 I watched the first three episodes of Bad Sisters (2022) and liked the Series so far. I kind of feel sorry for the John Paul actor. The character is such an unbelievable asshole that it must be really hard to portray someone like that.
• 🖼️ I went to see a Chagall exhibition in the Schirn / Frankfurt. The exhibition was very interesting and the Deutsche Bahn tried hard but failed to mess up the evening.
• 🤖 Reading Otavio's Week 2023-05 it suddenly occurred to me that I had totally forgotten that the LEGO Minifigures Series 24 had been released. I have bought in the last half year almost no more minifigures, because LEGO has become too expensive (for me) overall and I also unfortunately have no space at all for sets, but they may not be missing and will soon complement my small collection. Especially, I am looking forward to the Brown Astronaut and Spacebaby, as I am a huge LEGO Classic Space fan. (My collection on flickr.)
• 🧮 I've reorganised my RSS feeds in Reeder. I moved the high volume subscriptions to a separate list, unrelated to the topic, as I do with all the others. Now I can just mark them all as read when they get overwhelming.
• 🖋️ I put together a Shortcuts for Re: Toot to Day One export. I was really happy to find with the help from Automattic support that you can actually add an image to a diary entry using a Shortcuts action. I'd tried it before, but a bug in the Shortcuts UI made me think it wasn't possible. BTW I was a little worried when Automattic bought Day One, but the support is really great and so far the app is still maintained.
• 🪳 Speaking of bugs in Apple's OS, I started journaling about them.
• 🖥️ I've stumbled upon Hyperduck by @sindresorhus and as it seems he developed other very interesting programs, I will definitely look into.
• 🖥️ I enjoyed browsing Dockhunt but did not post my own dock yet.
• ❤️ Joanna released ‎status.log. A really nice app that lets you update your omg.lol[^1] status and read others.
• 🤣 Not sure when I will use this, but already had to smile about the idea alone: defaultnamehere/verylegit.link: A URL shortener, but it makes the URLs look extremely dodgy instead
• 🕹️Demon Quest 85 and Omaze were released for my playdate. I have tried to summon a demon - I feel like 100 times - and failed every time. In addition, the text is really too tiny for my old eyes. But on the other hand I enjoyed Omaze so far.
• 🎙️ Last but not least, I walked the dog and listened to a lot of podcasts: Accidental Tech Podcast: 519, AppStories: Mastodon Clients for iOS and iPadOS, Playdate Podcast: Omaze, Playdate Podcast: Demon Quest ’85, The Talk Show with Dan Moren, Connected: 435: I’m So Fedi Sorry, Mac Power Users: 677: Software Club: Fantastical, Accidental Tech Podcast: 520

🙋‍♂️

[^1]: please note, that this is a referral link

What I was interested in during the fifth week of 2023 (teaser: Chagall, LEGO, macOS, iOS, podcasts, tv)

In continuation to week four, here are the things I was interested in week five.

• 📺 I watched the first three episodes of Bad Sisters (2022) and liked the Series so far. I kind of feel sorry for the John Paul actor. The character is such an unbelievable asshole that it must be really hard to portray someone like that.
• 🖼️ I went to see a Chagall exhibition in Frankfurt. The exhibition was very interesting and Deutsche Bahn tried but failed to mess up the evening.
• 🤖 Reading Otavio's Week 2023-05 it suddenly occurred to me that I had totally forgotten that the LEGO Minifigures Series 24 had been released. I have bought in the last half year almost no more minifigures, because LEGO has become too expensive (for me) overall and I also unfortunately have no space at all for sets, but they may not be missing and will soon complement my small collection. Especially, I am looking forward to the Brown Astronaut and Spacebaby, as I am a huge LEGO Space fan. (My collection on flickr.)
• 🧮 I've reorganised my RSS feeds in Reeder. I moved the high volume subscriptions to a separate list, unrelated to the topic, as I do with all the others. Now I can just mark them all as read when they get overwhelming.
• 🖋️ I put together a Shortcuts for Re: Toot to Day One export. I was really happy to find with the help from Automattic support that you can actually add an image to a diary entry using a Shortcuts action. I'd tried it before, but a bug in the Shortcuts UI made me think it wasn't possible. BTW I was a little worried when Automattic bought Day One, but the support is really great and so far the app is still maintained.
• 🪳 Speaking of bugs in Apple's OS, I started journaling about them.
• 🖥️ I've stumbled upon Hyperduck by @sindresorhus and as it seems he developed other very interesting programs, I will definitely look into.
• 🖥️ I enjoyed browsing Dockhunt but did not post my own dock yet.
• 🤣 Not sure when I will use this, but already had to smile about the idea alone: defaultnamehere/verylegit.link: A URL shortener, but it makes the URLs look extremely dodgy instead
• Demon Quest 85 and Omaze were released for my playdate. I tried to summon a Demon but failed and the text is too tiny for to read but enjoyed Omaze so far.
• 🎙️ Last but not least, of course I walked the dog and listend to a lot of podcasts: Accidental Tech Podcast: 519, AppStories: Mastodon Clients for iOS and iPadOS, Playdate Podcast: Omaze, Playdate Podcast: Demon Quest ’85, The Talk Show with Dan Moren, Connected: 435: I’m So Fedi Sorry, Mac Power Users: 677: Software Club: Fantastical, Accidental Tech Podcast: 520

🙋‍♂️

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